Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
Recently, a friend sent me a link to a video on the Internet and I think was titled God is in the detail. And the producers of the video made what I thought was an interesting point. And they said, and essentially they illustrated it by saying, often, when we think of God, we think of the grand.
When we think of God in nature, we think of the grandeur of amazing waterfalls and the beauty of forests and trees and maybe looking out and seeing a pod of whales or even fish, wild animals running around, maybe in a big nature park somewhere. So we're looking at the things that are quite large. And then they went on, though, to point out that really, there's powerful evidence for a creator God in the detail.
And they pointed out, for example, that if we take a humble insect such as a butterfly, and we look at the design and then they, within the butterfly, the structures that are there within the butterfly, and then they honed in on the structure of the eye, of little butterfly's eye, and all the different cells and its shape and how virtually a butterfly, when it's flying, has virtually 360 degree vision. It can see all around it, above, below, behind, in front, simultaneously, all at the same time. And, of course, that helps it to avoid predators such as birds and so forth.
And just following that, as I was watching the news, there was an article about a man who had returned to his jeep, and he left the windows down on his jeep, and when he got there, there was a swarm of bees. Well, bees had swarmed and were hanging inside his vehicle, just above the pillar behind the driver's door, this big, massive bee. So he'd simply gone into a shop at a shopping centre to get some household items.
And when he came out, well, what am I going to do? But as fate would have it, there was an apeurist passing and he saw the predicament and had the equipment, he had a smoker and so forth, and was able to go over and smoke the bees and remove them and put them in a box. And a couple of things jumped out of me there. And that was the amazing fact that just at that time, there was this beekeeper was passing.
Just at that time. I know we often talk about Providence, but I remember travelling on a main highway where there was a collision between a car, well, several cars, actually, and a truck. It seemed that a car had overtaken another vehicle, one vehicle had overtaken another vehicle, but there was an oncoming car or truck, and it caused one of the vehicles to swerve into the path of the truck took out the steering on the truck.
And this was a great big Mac semi trailer carrying mining equipment. And the driver had lost steering, had crossed across the road to the opposite side in front of an ammonia truck which had just missed. And I thought, wow, if it had have hit the ammonia truck, everybody in the area would have been dead.
And at the same time no one was killed in the accident. Although the highway was closed for about 6 hours. We were about two vehicles behind the ammonia truck.
And I just thought of the amazing providence. There was a utility, or a pickup, I suppose some people would call it truck that had equipment on it. And essentially it was just like the chassis was left.
Most of the body had been taken off in the accident. And the two occupants of the car were sitting on the side of the road. And they were actually being attended to by an ambulance officer when we got there.
So we didn't actually see the accident, we were just behind. But there was an ambulance was following on the other side of the road that saw the whole thing. The ambulance officers were there, the two men, as I said, in this pickup that was totally demolished.
All they suffered were things like a broken arm, broken rib, that weren't life threatening. And I remember seeing the Mac truck because we were waiting there for about 6 hours. And I saw where the whole front axle and giant springs on this truck had been ripped to the side of the steering.
But the truck had come to rest along on the side of the road, parallel to the ammonia tanker, the big ammonia tanker, which was also a semi trailer, but obviously on the wrong side of the road and in the bush and trees on the side. So it was amazing that no one was killed in this accident. And there was an ambulance officer there, because this accident occurred on a very remote region of Australia.
It's a place where it'd be well over 100 kilometres or 60 miles in between sort of pieces of civilization. And yet when the accident occurred there, the ambulance just happened to be travelling there at that time. There are many examples of this, and when I think about it, it makes me think of God's providence in many cases.
Is there part of a plan? And just this morning I opened an email from a publisher, an editor of a large publishing house, that I'd written to 22 years ago to see if they were interested in publishing my book in six days, which went on to become a bestseller. That's in six days why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation. And at the time they knocked it back.
But the fact that they knocked it back I ended up going with a much larger international publisher. And this editor had written to me and said at the time I was new to the job and weren't sure what sort of books we would be publishing. But in hindsight now, I realised that was a mistake, that we didn't accept your book at that time.
But as I thought about this, was a relatively small publisher with a relatively small readership. And in hindsight, the fact that that was knocked back, it meant that I kept on pushing for a bigger opportunity and I went with a large. Ended up going with a large international publisher, New Holland, which were the first publishers of that book.
And of course, that book now has become. It's been a very, very strong seller in the area of creation since that time. It's 22 years now.
It's often in the top ten books on creation versus evolution on Amazon in the US, for example, now still selling today. And of course, it's gone through well over 60 printings and in various languages, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, as well as english editions in different countries. And when I think about these things and think about Providence, to me this is powerful evidence for the existence of God.
But of course, to many people it's still not, well, it's just chance, or they say, oh, well, you were lucky that that small publisher knocked it back and you ended up going with the bigger one. But I don't see that, because I see there are so many examples of this. And of course, people say, well, look, why was our beautiful daughter killed in that road accident? Well, I can't answer that, obviously.
But one thing I do know, as I was doing a lot of research into, for example, the effects of alcohol on crime and this sort of thing, and of course, I published the book uncork the hidden Hazards of alcohol. I found that when there were often random crimes committed, and in other words, crimes where violent crimes, where the perpetrator didn't know the victim often. And in many, many cases, it seemed almost a very high percentage of cases, the person was a Christian and a person that was really loved in their community, did a lot of community work.
This sort of thing, which was so often the case, it really stood out. And to me, again, this fits in with the whole picture of the controversy between good and evil. Now, admittedly, I'm supposed to be talking about bees, but again, I thought, what are the chances just at that time, that a beekeeper would be passing by at that particular time? And I can tell many stories, and I have on previous episodes of amazing coincidences like that, that occur.
When evolutionists believe in evolution, they have to believe in even greater coincidences. Because just after this, I was reading an article about bees. So I mentioned recently in one of my programmes, I'm reading a book, design, called Design and Catastrophe.
It was only just been published not so long ago. 51 scientists explore evidence in nature, essentially for design. And one of those articles talks about mathematics and design in the realms of bees.
It's by Dr. Luciano Gonzalez, and he I know is a strong creationist, and he writes that back, one of the Greek philosophers and geometra Pappus of Alexandria, who died about 290 AD, sorry, died about 350 AD.
In his treatise called synagogue, which was a collection of volumist work on mathematics, he is said to believe that he wrote, bees, by virtue of a certain geometrical forethought, know that a hexagon is greater than a square in a triangle, and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material. Well, of course, he was looking at that from, presumably a non Christian, a non creationist perspective. But it's interesting that the hexagon of the bee colony and these typical honey bees, which are bees that form colonies, and of course, not all bees form colonies.
Matter of fact, about 90% of bee species are solitary. Of course, we're most familiar with the commercial honeybees and the structures that they make, but only around about 10% of bee species actually form colonies of social creatures like that. But if we consider these honeybees and the way they construct that the angles are so close to 120 degrees, it's interesting.
So the interior angles of the equilateral triangle, the square and the hexagon are, of course, 60, 90 and 120. And the angle around each vertex of the hexagon of these structures, of course, the hexagon must add up to 360 degrees. And of course, that's what happens with the regular polygons, of course, have this property.
And it's interesting that these structures that the bees made are so accurate and so reproducible. So how did the bee know that that particular shape was the most efficient in terms of its structure, to hold the honey that it would produce for the minimum amount of material to encase it? It's really an optimal construction design. And it's fascinating that some of the behaviours that bees carry out can be explained mathematically from the perspective of what they call tessellation theory and optimum housing design.
And so this is, again, something that, again, just have so simple, just this hexagonal design that enables the bees to build this really efficient structure with a minimum amount of material that is actually extremely strong. The bees create these hexagonal prisms in three rhombic sections. The walls of the cell meet at exactly 120 degrees.
What makes this truly remarkable is that the bees work simultaneously on different sections of the honeycomb, which shows by their behaviour a strong feeling of collectivity. But they're building different bits in different parts. But it all adds up and fits together and makes these cells that are only 3200th of a centimetre thick.
It's really, really quite amazing, the thickness. And yet these cells can support 30 times their own weight. And the fact that they use this hexagonal structure, they use less wax.
And remember, the wax has to be sweated out. A lot of energy is expended by the bees in making that wax. And so by having these structures, they do less work to enclose the same space as if they were tessellating with prisms of a square or triangular basis.
And so it mathematically can demonstrated, of the three polygons, of course, the hexagon has the smallest perimeter for a given area. So when we look at these features, of course evolutionists have to believe that this structure just occurred by chance. It was just a random event that occurred.
Well, I think the evidence is overwhelming of a Creator that programmed the bees to do that. You think of the implications of bees structing just things randomly in all different shape, and yet different bees work collectively and build these structures up that all fit. So different bees are doing different parts, and yet it all fits together.
To me, this is overwhelming evidence of design and how this design was programmed into the bees to behave like that. So that's a very successful structure. And this is something that is very, very simple.
But if it wasn't there, if it didn't work, the efficiency of making different structures and so forth, when we take all that into account, it just points to someone who knew a perfect solution to the problem. I think when we think of bees, too often some people think of being stung. And I remember as the journalists filmed the beekeeper, or as it was filmed, whoever it was that was there, that filmed for the news, the apiarists getting the bees out, he was obviously stunned because you see him shaking his hands a couple of times.
And again, when we think of bee venom, again, for all these things, the chemicals that are involved in this all have to be pre programmed to work. And you got to have something. You're not going to poison the bee, and yet the venom has to work just effectively in just the right situation, you have to have just the right chemical compounds there.
And of course, they are all produced by the genetic code. And again, evolutionists have to believe that the code to make these different compounds arose by chance. The other thing is, too, when the bees seal off the little larvae, the little egg is laid in the little cell and the larvae grow and it's being fed.
And then, of course, the cell is sealed over, and of course, it's sealed over with a porous wax, a wax of different composition. So it's porous compared to the structure. Otherwise little larvae inside would die, would suffocate.
It needs to be able to breathe. And of course, the other thing is, too, that when the little larvae reaches the stage where it's about to go undergo metamorphos, it weaves itself a little cocoon and there's a special gland on the side of its head that emits these silk, this particular compound that's runny and then sets and forms the silk around the cocoon, a transparent silk. And so again, you have to understand that all at the same time coordinated, that the chemistry to produce the compounds to make this silk that comes out as a liquid but then sets quickly, all the chemicals to make that reaction happen are produced in the body by different reactions.
And all that has been pre programmed by the DNA, the code. And again, as evolutionists have to believe, that that code arose by chance, blind mutations that actually ended up producing this amazing gland and the amazing chemicals that, when combined, produce this quick setting silk. I think when we look at the detail like this, the overwhelming evidence for a creator just stands out just so abundantly in my mind.
There are so many aspects to bees and the bee structure, the beehive, the body of the bee, the eye, all these little structures that form part of the bee that point to an amazing engineering designer. Because when you think of the body of the bee and his wings are relatively small, and yet he flies very efficiently, and there's been quite a few studies into that and the type of bee wings and their body that also gives them lift and so forth. There are just so many aspects to this that all line up and all work, the compounds in the pollen and how the bees can process this in their digestive system and extract the protein and so forth.
And that, of course, is what is fed to the little baby bees. And of course, the amount of feeding to the larvae determines whether it's going to be a queen or not. And of course, whether the eggs are fertilised or not depends whether they're a male or female? The female eggs are eggs that have been fertilised that the queen lays.
And so the queen can actually determine the number of male and female eggs, it would seem that she lays. There's so many aspects to this that again, when we look at the detail and in so many aspects of nature, to me it just points overwhelmingly to a creator. If we look up an article like this, however, on something, on Wikipedia and this sort of thing, many of these fine features, these fine details are glossed over and the significance of them.
And I'll talk about the genetics and this sort of thing, as if it can all happen by just random mutations and theory of evolution and so forth, by natural selection. But we've got to remember, natural selection removes information, it doesn't increase information. Of course, I guess people can still argue, well, that still doesn't prove that there is a God.
But when I think about it, the Bible says that humans were made in God's image. And the Bible tells a story about how this amazing creator wanted to actually have a relationship with us, this creator, this mind, this non material being. And remember, God is non material, God is spirit.
He's outside space and time, he's not limited by time. And I think we have a very shallow limitation, a very shallow understanding of time. It's much, much deeper than just the ticking over of the clock and trying to date things as millions of years.
And I think sometimes people again, that try to pick holes in the Bible, forget this, forget the factors that determine time. But we have this picture that we are created in God's image. And really we've been able to understand the detail that's out there in nature.
As we explore, as we look down over the years, we've begun to learn the chemistry. If we go back nearly 2000 years or 1800 years, 1700 years, we get to scientists that observed and made these observations in nature and reported these intricacies. And it's taken these thousands of years for us to really develop an understanding, to look at the mathematics, to begin to apply mathematics and understand there's so much mathematics involved and understand the laws of physics and then chemistry.
And as we've done this, we've been able to do it through our mind. Bees can't programme and design new features, they can't design a new type of architecture. But we as humans can.
We're special. We can design architecture, we can learn these facts about a hexagon and hexagonal prisms and so forth, and we can apply it and we can build on it and we can discover from science. We can learn, we can mimic nature, but bees and that can't, they're limited to that.
They're not evolving the ability to create new types of structures that have advantages. But we have been able to. And to me again, this is powerful evidence that the Bible account fits what we actually observe in nature.
It fits the human description of humanity. We can understand the evidence that points to God. And of course, I think that God saw the crime.
When you think about it, man has deteriorated badly for thousands of years. We've been fighting one another, we've been killing one another, good people have been killed by bad people and so forth. And you must think, when God looks down on this, he must be so disappointed and so sad and it makes so much sense that God should come and live amongst us.
Now. If you think about now, if God came down some spaceship and a big display, we'd all be in fear and all, we'd all do exactly what we said. But by God coming as Jesus, as a very humble teacher there, a very poor teacher, and showing the way, we have to make that choice, that that's what we want to be.
And that then shows our genuineness of heart. If we choose genuinely to accept Jesus' death on the cross on our behalf, because we don't want to be that bad person. It separates the people that are just wanting to be good because they don't want to be hurt.
As to those, that's what they choose. They really want to be good. They really want to be in a kingdom of God that is filled with love.
Remember, if you want to relisten to this programme, you just google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button. You've been listening to Faith and Science.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
